But what ship are you on board?" "Ardrigh, cross-channel cattle boat.

"You won't go far in the cross-channel trade.

The only commands on which it was possible to draw further were the Grand Fleet, the Harwich and Dover forces, the destroyers of old types working on the East Coast, or the destroyers and "P" boats protecting our cross-Channel communications west of the Dover Command.

The destroyers on the East Coast and in the Portsmouth Command were already inadequate to afford proper protection to the trade and the cross-Channel communications, as evidenced by our losses.

In the same month there were 2,159 cross-Channel sailings and ten losses, nine of these vessels being unescorted.

So long as the Belgian coast ports remained in German possession, the Naval force that could be based there constituted a very serious menace to the cross-Channel traffic.

Lines of mined nets laid across the expected track of enemy vessels was a device frequently employed; submarines, as has been stated, were used on the cross-Channel barrage to watch for the passage of enemy submarines and destroyers, and everything that ingenuity could suggest was done to catch the German craft if they came out.

They formed the principal, indeed practically the only, protection for the vast volume of trade passing the Straits of Dover as well as for our cross-Channel communications.

This force was based within seventy miles of Dover, and as the Germans had no traffic of any sort to defend, was always available for offensive operations against our up and down or cross-Channel traffic.

The flotilla leaders on that occasion were, as was customary, patrolling at the Dover end of the cross-Channel barrage.

When the English settled they lost the sense of the sea; they became a little parochial people, tilling fields and tending cattle, wool-gathering and wool-bartering, their shipping confined to cross-Channel merchandise, and coastwise sailing from port to port.

Did not her people hear the beating of Death's war drums across the fields of Europe, growing louder and louder, so that on a cross-Channel boat I heard it booming in my ears, louder than the wind?